In the current information age, printing devices including traditional printers and Multi-Function Products (MFPs) have become extensively used in enterprise and other organization environments. Various computing devices such as user terminals may be connected to a printer, in order to transmit a print job to the printer.
Conventionally, when a user of a terminal wishes to submit a print job of a document to a printer, the user may first be presented with a print preview of the document on a display unit of the terminal, before the print job is submitted to the printer. The print preview is intended to provide a representation of what a completed hardcopy printout of the document may look like if the print job is submitted to the printer. In this way, the user may determine if a hardcopy printout of the document will have the intended presentation, with respect to the text, images, formatting and margins of the document, as well as other aspects of the document.
However, there is a drawback in that a conventional print preview is generated by an application operating on the user's terminal, such as a print driver application or the application that was employed by the user to create the document. Thus, the conventional print preview is generated using only the resources of the terminal, and the actual print job and associated print data is not submitted to the printer until after the print preview has been generated and displayed by the terminal.
As a result, the conventional print preview is not generated using the resources of the printer, even though the actual hardcopy printout of the document will be formed with the resources of the printer. For example, the final document may include printer fonts, forms, logos, letterhead, overlays, signatures, barcodes, banners, and other elements generated by the resources of the printing device. Thus, the conventional print preview does not provide the user with an accurate representation of what the final hardcopy printout of the document will look like after these resources of the printer are applied.
As a further example, if the user wishes to submit a print job of a color document, the conventional print preview will display a preview of the color document. However, if the printer can only print in monochrome, or the user then selects a monochrome setting of the printer for the print job or a low-ink ‘economy’ setting of the printer for the print job, the conventional print preview simply does not provide a representation of what the final hardcopy printout of the document will look like after these resources of the printer are applied.
There exists a need for an improved approach for previewing and submitting print jobs, using techniques that are efficient and not as difficult to use (as a practical matter).